you must give; give only if you are someone for whom
giving is its own reward."
When I give something I do not possess, I give a false
and dangerous gift, a gift that looks like love but is, in
reality, loveless-a gift given more from my need to prove
myself than from the other's need to be cared for. That kind
of giving is not only loveless but faithless, based on the
arrogant and mistaken notion that God has no way of
channeling love to the other except through me. Yes, we are
created in and for community, to be there, in love, for one
another. But community cuts both ways: when we reach the
limits of our own capacity to love, community means
trusting that someone else will be available to the person in
need.
One sign that I am violating my own nature in the name
of nobility is a condition called burnout. Though usually
regarded as the result of trying to give too much, burnout in
my experience results from trying to give what I do not
possessthe ultimate in giving too little! Burnout is a state of
emptiness, to be sure, but it does not result from giving all I
have: it merely reveals the nothingness from which I was
trying to give in the first place.
May Sarton, in her poem "Now I Become Myself," uses
images from the natural world to describe a different kind of
giving, grounded in a different way of being, a way that
results not in burnout but in fecundity and abundance: